Scientific Balloons

Scientific Balloons
Goddard Space Flight Center
Wallops Flight Facility
Every spring in Palestine, Texas, the wide-open fields around NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility fill with students and faculty from across Louisiana. They arrive carrying sensors, laptops, and carefully engineered payloads they have spent months preparing.
Posted August 3, 2026
Eclipses
Goddard Space Flight Center
Heliophysics
Johnson Space Center
Langley Research Center
Scientific Balloons
Skywatching
Solar Eclipses
The Sun
WB-57
Each time the Moon covers the Sun during a total solar eclipse — darkening daytime skies and briefly revealing the Sun’s ethereal outer atmosphere, the corona — it presents new opportunities to better understand our star and its influence on Earth. On Wednesday, Aug. 12, as the next total solar eclipse sweeps over Greenland, Iceland, […]
Posted July 27, 2026
Scientific Balloons
A scientific balloon starts its ascent into the air as it prepares to launch carrying NASA’s Payload for Ultrahigh Energy Observations (PUEO) mission. The mission lifted off from Antarctica at 5:56 a.m. NZST, Saturday, Dec. 20 (11:56 a.m., Friday, Dec. 19 in U.S. Eastern Time). The PUEO mission is designed to detect radio signals created […]
Posted January 5, 2026
Scientific Balloons
Astrophysics
Astrophysics Division
Goddard Space Flight Center
Wallops Flight Facility
NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program has returned to Wānaka, New Zealand, for two scheduled flights to test and qualify the agency’s super pressure balloon technology.
Posted March 14, 2025
Manufacturing, Materials, 3-D Printing
Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Balloons
Space Communications & Navigation Program
Space Communications Technology
Technology
In fall 2024, NASA developed and tested a 3D-printed antenna to demonstrate a low-cost capability to communicate science data to Earth.
Posted January 22, 2025
Scientific Balloons
Astrophysics
Astrophysics Division
Goddard Space Flight Center
Wallops Flight Facility
NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program has returned to Antarctica’s icy expanse to kick off the annual Antarctic Long-Duration Balloon Campaign, where two balloon flights will carry a total of nine missions to near space. Launch operations will begin mid-December from the agency’s Long Duration Balloon camp located near the U.S.
Posted December 10, 2024
People of Goddard
Goddard Space Flight Center
Scientific Balloons
Wallops Flight Facility
Almost a decade ago, then-grad student Kyle Helson contributed to early paperwork for NASA’s EXCITE mission. As a scientist at Goddard, Helson helped make this balloon-based telescope a reality: EXCITE launched successfully on Aug. 31.
Posted September 10, 2024
Learning Resources
Scientific Balloons
Wallops Flight Facility
NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program’s fifth balloon mission of the 2024 fall campaign took flight Wednesday, Sept. 4, 2024, from the agency’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. The HASP 1.0 (High-Altitude Student Platform) mission remained in flight over 11 hours before it safely touched down. Recovery is underway.
Posted September 6, 2024
Astrophysics
Exoplanets
Goddard Space Flight Center
Infrared Light
Scientific Balloons
The Universe
Wallops Flight Facility
Scientists and engineers are ready to fly an infrared mission called EXCITE (EXoplanet Climate Infrared TElescope) to the edge of space.  EXCITE is designed to study atmospheres around exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, during circumpolar long-duration scientific balloon flights.
Posted August 22, 2024
Scientific Balloons
Astrophysics
Goddard Space Flight Center
Wallops Flight Facility
NASA’s Scientific Balloon Program has kicked off its annual fall balloon campaign at the agency’s balloon launch facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Eight balloon flights carrying scientific experiments and technology demonstrations are scheduled to launch from mid-August through mid-October.
Posted August 9, 2024
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